Companies are traditionally judged on productivity so why should you care if your staff is happy as long as they get their work done?  You have enough to worry about, real things such as quota’s, sales, and operations. Not so fast!  As it turns out there’s a strong link between productivity and employee happiness. Consider this from Shawn Achor: The happy secret to better work:

• We think success will lead to happiness when in fact happiness leads to success.
• 90% of workplace happiness is related to internal factors, not external.
• 75% of success is predictable by measuring optimism, social support and your ability to view stress as a challenge and not a threat.

The business case for workplace happiness is based on solid evidence.

According to J.M. George in his research article published in Human Relations, and P. Totterdell and his colleagues, in their article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, a bad mood moves people into an entirely different way of thinking and acting. When people are feeling negative they become critics of each other, and take a win-lose approach to problems and efficiency suffers. Negative people concentrate on what is wrong and attempt to correct it. Conversely, a positive mood stimulates people to be creative, tolerant, constructive, generous and non-defensive. The focus is not on what is wrong, but on what is right.

Psychologist Martin Seligman, in his book, Authentic Happiness, cites his research on positive emotions among 272 employees during a study of their job performance for 18 months. He concluded that happier people got better performance evaluations and high pay.

D. G. Myers, in The Pursuit of Happiness, says that compared to employees who are depressed or unhappy, happy employees have lower medical costs, work more efficiently and have less absenteeism

According to The Wall Street Journal, happy employees are 36% more motivated, 31% more successful in achieving their goals, and 33% more likely to assist their coworkers when compared with their unhappy counterparts,

Alexander Kjerulf, Author of Happy Hour is 9 to 5 offers these workplace facts. Happy people work better with others. What does this means to your company? Better employee relations if you’re a manager. More satisfied customers if you’re in a service job, improved sales if you’re in sales. In addition to that happy employees are more creative, energetic and motivated as well as being better at solving problems rather than creating them.

So the next time you see your employees laughing around the water cooler don’t scowl in an attempt to shame them into getting back to work – join them!